Police Officer Involved Domestic Violence.
Lighting a candle of remembrance for those who've lost their lives to domestic violence behind the blue wall, for strength and wisdom to those still there, and a non-ending prayer for those who thought they had escaped but can't stop being afraid.

BRIAN BRUSH, LONG BEACH KILLER, GETS 88 YEARS FOR 2009 MURDER
The Daily News Online
By Tony Lystra
Thursday, February 9
[Excerpts] Former Oregon police officer Brian Brush was sentenced Thursday to more than 88 years in prison for the 2009 murder of his ex-girlfriend on a busy beach in front of tourists and two police officers. "You deserve every single day of this," Pacific County Superior Court Judge Michael J. Sullivan told Brush, citing the "violence, terror, the horror" Brush inflicted on his victim, her family and the people who witnessed the shooting. Brush, 49, shot Lisa G. Bonney, a 45-year-old mother of two, on Sept. 11, 2009, four times with a shotgun... The sentence came at the end of an gut-wrenching, two-hour hearing during which some members of Bonney's family flung coarse language at Brush and condemned him. Nine security officers and Pacific County Sheriff's deputies positioned themselves throughout the courtroom, several of them flanking Brush as a few family members sneered in his direction... Bonney's 19-year-old daughter, Olivia Bonney of Vancouver, demanded repeatedly during a rambling testimony of about 20 minutes that Brush look at her. Brush kept his eyes cast downward. "Hey, you! You murdered her!" Olivia Bonney called out... The shooting happened about two months after Bonney broke up with Brush... "He was losing everything else in his life," [Lisa's ex-husband] Raymon Bonney said. "He snapped." Still, some of Bonney's family members said they could not bring themselves to hate Brush. Bonney's eldest daughter, Elizabeth Bonney, a 20-year-old junior at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, told the court she was overcome with an impulse during the trial to approach Brush and ask how he was holding up. "I don't know — I care," she said, as though she was surprised to hear herself speaking the words. "I just feel that now I'm left with cleaning up a mess — a mess that you created. I feel I need to be so strong. I do it for my mom." [Full article here]